FileZilla is an excellent FTP client. It has got directory sync and as well as filters. These two in combination form a powerful tool when editing on-line sites (rather I should say altering existing ones). The reason is you often have to edit a bunch of files in various places before you get the desired result.

For example in Zen Cart install I have to alter multiple files when I want to make a new page or module. There are language files (PHP) , headers , templates , flash etc. For a particular task I am usually working on a bunch of them at a time. So its easy to navigate to the desired folder (mirroring it on a local copy of the website) and put the file on the server.

Another good part of FileZilla is the queue. When the uploads are done … you can go to the finished uploads pane and reset and requeue a bunch of files for another round of uploads. Lets say you are always modifying a bunch of 6 files for a particular task. After you make changes you start uploading the files. Once done you can do it easily again by resetting the queue and redoing the uploads. You dont have to travel the directory structure again !

However I found a bottle neck here . Once I restarted the FileZilla instance my queue was set to the last bunch opf pending uploads/downloads. The finished items are not there. So if you forgot to reset the bunch you are working on …. you will have to go through the directory structure again to fix up the queue.

Well me being lazy , decided I needed a way out. so I found where it stores the pending queue. On a windows machine it is in

C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\FileZilla\queue.xml

Note : replace Administrator with your User Name.

The next part was easy. I set up all my uploads and exited FileZilla. After that I copied the queue.xml file and gave it another name (queue_old.xml) and then  saved it. Next I restarted FileZilla and deleted the queue and exited. Naturally the new queue.xml was set to a blank queue. However I just deleted this one and copied back the old one and renamed it to queue.xml.

Thats it ! Voila …. Next time I started FileZilla the queue was back ! This gave me a great Idea. I have now made separate queue.xml files for separate sets of tasks. So when I am working on a particular module – I just copy the correct queue file and rename it to queue.xml. Another good part is that since these are XML files you can easily concatenate them to produce various combinations !